DownBeat Magazine

By James Porter

A strong community feeling permeated The Hyde Park Jazz Festival, which ran Sept. 28-29 across twelve different locations on Chicago’s South Side.

Chicago Reader

By Philip Montoro and Michael Jackson

This past weekend the 13th annual Hyde Park Jazz Festival brought 36 performances by local, national, and international artists to more than a dozen venues and stages in and around Hyde Park.

Hyde Park Herald

By Aaron Cohen

As Angel Bat Dawid conducted her newly commissioned orchestral “Requiem For Jazz,” on Saturday at the Logan Center Performance Hall, she ended with the declaration, “Everyone on this stage is the promise.” She was referring to the musicians in her ensemble and for their assurance that they will keep the music’s legacy alive. One could say the same thing about the entire Hyde Park Jazz Festival.

Chicago Jazz Magazine

By Jeff Cebulski

While the South Side festival continues its two-day format, a significant majority of its acts will play on Saturday, Sept. 28, in fourteen different venues scattered near and within the University of Chicago area.

Chicago Tribune

By Howard Reich

This city overflows with music festivals, from the raucous to the serene.

But none feels quite like the Hyde Park Jazz Festival, an event that embraces and celebrates its singular neighborhood.

Chicago Tribune

By Britt Julious

Like her music, composer, clarinetist and singer Angel Elmore (who performs as Angel Bat Dawid) is passionate, intelligent, and forthright. But more importantly, she is on a mission. Period.

“I’m not a politician. I don’t really like weapons. I don’t really like going to marches and stuff like that,” Elmore said. “But I am a musician, and I believe in the power of sound, and I really do believe that if I put this intention out sonically, it really will change stuff. I really do.”

PBS WTTW

Chicago Tonight

With a new record in the wings – and concerts around the world – one of Chicago’s hidden musical talents is increasingly becoming not so hidden. He recently turned 21 years old – but musically, Isaiah Collier is an old soul.

Block Club Chicago

By Maxwell Evans

HYDE PARK — The two-day Hyde Park Jazz Festival returns for its 13th edition this weekend, getting local, national and international jazz artists acquainted with the South Side’s rich musical history.

Chicago Magazine

By Mark Guarino

In just a few years, Angel Bat Dawid has emerged as one of the most compelling figures in Chicago’s free jazz scene. The clarinetist–composer has performed in ensembles led by Ben LaMar Gay, Damon Locks, and Roscoe Mitchell, and founded a collective called the Participatory Music Coalition. Earlier this year, the Chicago label International Anthem released her acclaimed debut The Oracle.

Chicago Reader

By Bill Meyer

The happy paradox of the Hyde Park Jazz Festival is that while it was instituted to celebrate the jazz legacy of Chicago’s south side, its programming puts it on par with great jazz festivals around the globe. It commissions new projects from rising local musicians.

JazzTimes

The Polish festival Jazztopad, which turns 16 in November, is extending its reach into the United States, marking its fifth year of events in New York and its first in Chicago, where the Iraqi-American trumpeter Amir ElSaffar will present a new chamber-music piece, Ahwaal (the title translates roughly as “states of consciousness”), on Sept. 28 as part of the Hyde Park Jazz Festival.

Block Club Chicago

By Pat Nabong

South Shore residents and people from around Chicago gathered for Back Alley Jazz Festival, which is reviving a tradition that started in the ‘60s.

Chicago Tribune

by Howard Reich

Why does groundbreaking jazz thrive in Chicago?

The great performers who live and tour here of course set the standard, but there’s another key factor at play: the audience.

Hyde Park Herald

Hyde Park Jazz Festival Executive Director Kate Dumbleton (right) receives the “2019 Jazz Hero Award” from the Jazz Journalists Association (JJA) at the Logan Café, 915 E. 60th St. Grammy-award winning journalist, music critic and radio host Neil Tesser made the presentation during a break between sets of the Café’s Third Tuesday Jazz series on April 16, 2019. Jazz journalist Michael Jackson wrote of Dumbleton on the JJA Jazz Awards’s website: “The choice of … Kate Dumbleton as the JJA’s 2019 Chicago Jazz Hero is a no-brainer. She is chiefly revered in the jazzosphere for helping transform the neighborhood Hyde Park Jazz Festival into an event of national and international repute.”